That spirit of innovation in mainstream entertainment that we of the Gen X generation enjoyed has since been crushed in a tide of remakes, reboots, and sequels. The mainstream cultural sector – the media conglomerates that control the films, TV, and music that make popular culture – is increasingly interested in…
The third level continues. Games have storylines like the historical novel, which arc from beginning to end. Games have cinematic cut scenes, pure montages of attraction. Games subsume the lines of television just as television subsumed cinema and cinema the novel. But they are something else as well. They are not…
The Lord of the Rings fascination reaches far beyond trail names. It seemed like every AT shelter had “Not all who wander are lost” carved into it somewhere; the quote also serves as the most overused thru-hiking Instagram caption. It’s so ubiquitous that most a number of people don’t know it’s from Bilbo’s poem about…
One of the chief problems, Sykes said, was that it had become impossible to prove to listeners that Trump was telling falsehoods because over the past several decades the conservative news media had “basically eliminated any of the referees, the gatekeepers.” “There's nobody,” he lamented. “Let's say that Donald Trump…
Museums are, in a way, the cathedrals of the modern world, places where sacred issues are expressed and where people come to reflect on them. A museum is also a kind of bridge between the academy and the public.